The Seven Loose Pieces of the Global Jigsaw Puzzle

(Neoliberalism as a puzzle: the useless global unity
which fragments and destroys nations)

[Translator's note: In June of 1997 the following document appeared
in a European publication. It is an analysis of neoliberalism by
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation. Cecilia Rodriguez of the NCDM]

1. First piece: The concentration of wealth and the
distribution of poverty

2. Second piece: The globalization of exploitation

3. Third piece: Migration, the errant nightmare

4. Fourth Piece; Financial globalization and the globalization
of corruption and crime

"War is a matter of vital importance for the State, it is the
province of life and death, the path which leads to survival or
annihilation. It is indispensable to study it at length".The Art of War, Sun Tzu.

Modern globalization, neoliberalism as a global system, should be
understood as a new war of conquest for territories.

The end of the III World War or "Cold War" does not mean that the
world has overcome the polarity and finds its stability under the
hegemony of the victor. At the end of this war there was, without
doubt a loser (the socialist camp), but it is difficult to say who
was the victor. Western Europe? The United States? Japan? All of
them? The fact is that the defeat of the "evil empire" (Dixit Reagan
and Thatcher) signified the opening of new markets without a new
owner. Therefore a struggle was needed in order to possess them, to
conquer them.

Not only that, but the end of the "Cold War" brought with it a new
framework of international relations in which the new struggle for
those new markets and territories produced a new world war, the IV.
This required, as do all wars, a redefinition of the national States.
And beyond the re-definition of the national states, the world order
returned to the old epochs of the conquests of America, Africa and
Oceania. This is a strange modernity that moves forward by going
backward. The dusk of the 20th century has more similarities with
previous brutal centuries than with the placid and rational future of
some science-fiction novel. In the world of the Post-Cold War vast
territories, wealth, and above all, a skilled labor force, await a
new owner.

But it is a position of owner of the world, and there are many who
aspire to it. And in order to win it another war breaks out, but now
among those who call themselves the "Good Empire".

If the III World War was between capitalism and socialism (lead by
the United States and the USSR respectively) with different levels of
intensity and alternating scenarios; the Fourth World War occurs now
among the great financial centers, with complete scenarios and with a
sharp and constant intensity.

Since the end of the Second World War until 1992, there have been
149 wars in all the world. The results are 23 million dead, and
therefore there is no doubt about the intensity of this Third World
War (Statistical source: UNICEF). >From the catacombs of
international espionage to the astral space of the so-called
Strategic Defense Initiative (the "Star Wars" of the cowboy Ronald
Reagan); from the sands of Playa Giron, in Cuba, to the Mekong Delta
in Vietnam; from the unbridled nuclear arms war to the savage blows
of the State in the tormented Latin America; from the ominous
maneuvers of the armies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to
the CIA agents in the Bolivia which oversaw the assassination of Che
Guevara; the badly-named "Cold War" reached temperatures which, in
spite of the continuous change of scenery and the incessant ups-and
downs of the nuclear crisis (and precisely because of that) ended up
sinking the socialist camp as a global system, and diluted it as a
social alternative.

The Third World War showed the magnanimity of the "complete war" (
in all places and in all forms) for the victor: capitalism. But the
scenario of the post-war was profiled in fact, as a new theater of
global operations. Great extensions of "No man's land" (because of
the political, social and economic devastation of Eastern Europe and
the USSR), world powers in expansion (The United States, Western
Europe and Japan), a world economic crisis, and a new technological
revolution: the revolution of information. "In the same way in which
the industrial revolution had allowed the replacement of muscle by
the machine, the information revolution replaced the brain (or at
least a growing number of its important functions) by the computer."
This "general cerebralization" of the means of productio n (the same
as occurred in industry as in services) is accelerated by the
explosion of new telecommunications research and the proliferation of
the cyberworlds." (Ignacio Ramonet "La planete des desordres" in the
"Geopolitique du Chaos" Maniere de Voir 3. Le Monde Diplomatique
(LMD), April of 1997.)

The supreme kind of capital, financial capital, began then to
develop its strategy of war towards the new world and over what was
left of the old. Hand in hand with the technological revolution which
placed the entire world, through a computer, on its desk and at its
mercy, the financial markets imposed their laws and precepts on the
entire planet. The "globalization" of the new war is nothing more
than the globalization of the logic of the financial markets. The
National States (and their leaders) went from being directors of the
economy to those who were directed, better said tele-directed, by the
basic premise of financial power: free commercial exchange. Not only
that, but the logic of the market took advantage of the "porosity"
which in all the social spectrum of the world, provoked the
development of telecommunications and penetrated and appropriated all
the aspects of social activity. Finally there was a global war which
was total!

One of the first casualties of this new war was the national
market. Like a flying bullet inside an armored room, the war begun by
neoliberalism bounced from one side to the other and wounded the one
who had fired it. One of the fundamental bases of power in the modern
capitalist State, the national market, was liquidated by the shot
fired by the new era of the financial global economy. International
capital took some of its victims by dismantling national capitalism
and wearing it out, until it disabled its public powers. The blow has
been so brutal and definitive that the national States do not have
the necessary strength to oppose the action of the international
markets which transgress the interests of citizens and governments.

The careful and ordered escapade which the "Cold War" handed down,
the "new world order" quickly became pieces due to the neoliberal
explosion. World capitalism sacrificed without mercy that which gave
it a future and a historic project; national capitalism. Companies
and States fell apart in minutes, but not due to the torments of
proletarian revolutions, but the stalemates of financial hurricanes.
The child (neoliberalism) ate the father (national capitalism) and in
passing destroyed all of the discursive fallacies of capitalist
ideology: in the new world order there is no democracy, liberty,
equality, nor fraternity.

In the global scenario which is a product of the end of the "Cold
War" all which is perceptible is a new battleground and in this one,
as in all battlegrounds, chaos reigns.

At the end of the "Cold war" capitalism created a new bellicose
horror: the neutron bomb. The "virtue" of this weapon is that it only
destroys life and leaves buildings intact. Entire cities could be
destroyed (that is, their inhabitants) without the necessity of
reconstructing them (and paying for them). The arms industry
congratulated itself. The "irrationality " of nuclear bombs could be
replaced by the new "rationality " of the neutron bomb. But a new
bellicose "marvel" would be discovered at the same time as the birth
of the Fourth World War: the financial bomb.

The new neoliberal bomb, different from its atomic predecessor in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, did not only destroy the polis (the Nation in
this case) and imposed death, terror and misery to those who lived in
it: or, different from the neutron bomb, did not solely destroy
"selectively". The neoliberal bomb, reorganized and reordered what it
attacked and remade it as a piece inside a jigsaw puzzle of economic
globalization. After its destructive effect, the result is not a pile
of smoking ruins, or tens of thousands of inert lives, but a
neighborhood attached to one of the commercial megalopolis of the new
world supermarket and a labor force re-arranged in the new market of
world labor.

The European union, one of the megalopolis produced by
neoliberalism, is a result of the Fourth World War. Here, economic
globalization erased the borders between rival States, long-time
enemies, and forced them to converge and consider political unity.
From the National States to the European federation, the economist
path of the neoliberal war in the so-called "old continent" would be
filled with destruction and ruins, one of which was European
civilization.

The megalopolis reproduced themselves in all the planet. The
integrated commercial zones were the territory where they were
erected. So it was in North America, where the North American Free
Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico is no
more than the prelude to the fulfillment of an old aspiration of U.S.
manifest destiny: "America for Americans". In South America the path
is the same in terms of Mercosur between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay
and Uruguay. In Northern Africa, with the Union of Arab States (UMA)
between Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Libya and Mauritania; in south
Africa, in the Near East, in the Black Sea, in Pacific Asia, etc.,
all over the planet the financial bombs explode and territories are
re-conquered.

Do the megalopolis substitute the nations? No, or not only. They
also include them and reassign their functions, limits and
possibilities. Entire nations are converted into departments of the
neoliberal megacompany. Neoliberalism thus operated
DESTRUCTION/DEPOPULATION on the one hand, and
RECONSTRUCTION/REORGANIZATION on the other, of regions and of nations
in order to open new markets and renovate the existing ones.

If the nuclear bombs have a dissuasive, coercive, and intimidating
character in World War III, in the IV global conflagration the
financial hyperbombs play the same role. These weapons serve to
attack territories (National States) DESTROYING the material bases of
national sovereignty (all the ethical, judicial, political, cultural
and historic obstacles against economic globalization) and producing
a qualitative depopulation on their territories. This depopulation
consists in detaching all those who are useless to the new market
economy (as are the indigenous).

But, in addition to this, the financial centers operate,
simultaneously a RECONSTRUCTION of the National States and they
REORGANIZE them according to the new logic of the global market ( the
developed economic models are imposed upon weak or non-existing
social relations).

The IV World War in rural areas, for example, produces this
effect. Rural renovation, demanded by the financial markets, tries to
increase agricultural productivity, but what it does is to destroy
traditional economic and social relations. The results: a massive
exodus from the countryside to the cities. Yes, just as in a war.
Meanwhile, in the urban zones the market is saturated with labor and
the unequal distribution of salaries is the "justice" which await
those who seek better conditions of life.

Examples which illustrate this strategy fill the indigenous world.
Ian Chambers, director of the Office for Central America of the ILO
(of the United Nations), declared that the indigenous population of
the world, estimated at 300 million, live in zones which have 60% of
the natural resources of the planet.

Therefore the "MULTIPLE CONFLICTS DUE TO THE USE AND FINAL
DESTINATION OF THEIR LANDS AS DETERMINED BY THE INTEREST OF
GOVERNMENTS AND COMPANIES IS NOT SURPRISING(...)THE EXPLOITATION OF
NATURAL RESOURCES (OIL AND MINERALS) AND TOURISM ARE THE PRINCIPAL
INDUSTRIES WHICH THREATEN INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES IN AMERICA"
(interview with Martha Garcia in "La Jornada". May 28, 1997). Behind
the investment projects comes the pollution, prostitution and drugs.
In other words, the reconstruction/reorganization of the
destruction/depopulation of the zone.

In this new world war, modern politics as the organizer of
National States no longer exists. Now politics is solely the economic
organizer and politicians are the modern administrators of companies.
The new owners of the world are not government, they don't need to
be. The "national" governments are in charge of administering the
businesses in the different regions of the world.

This is the "new world order", the unification of the entire world
in one complete market. Nations are department stores with CEO's
dressed as governments, and the new regional alliances, economic and
political, come closer to being a modern commercial "mall" than a
political federation. The "unification" produced by neoliberalism is
economic, it is the unification of markets to facilitate the
circulation of money and merchandise. In the gigantic global
Hypermarket merchandise circulates freely, not people.

As in all business initiatives (and war), this economic
globalization is accompanied by a general model of thought.
Nevertheless, among so many new things, the ideological model which
accompanies neoliberalism in its conquest of the planet is old and
moss-covered. The "American way of life" which accompanied the
Northamerican troops in Europe during World War II, and in Vietnam
during the 60's and more recently, in the Persian Gulf War, now goes
hand in hand (or hand in computers) with the financial markets.

This is not only about material destruction of the material bases
of the National States, but also (and in a very important and rarely
-studied manner) about historic and cultural destruction. The dignity
of indigenous history of the countries of the American continent, the
brilliance of European civilization, the historic wisdom of Asian
nations, and the powerful and rich antiquity of Africa and Oceania,
all the cultures and histories which forged nations are attacked by
the model of Northamerican life. Neoliberalism in this way imposes a
total war: the destruction of nations and groups of nations in order
to homogenize them with the Northamerican capitalist model.

A war then, a world war, the IV. The worst and cruelest. The one
which neoliberalism unleashes in all places and by all means against
humanity.

But, as in all wars, there are combats, winners and losers, and
torn pieces of that destroyed reality. In order to construct the
absurd jigsaw puzzle of the neoliberal world many pieces are
necessary. Some can be found among the ruins this world war has left
on the planetary surface. At least 7 of these pieces can be
reconstructed and can fan the hope that this world conflict not end
with the death of the weakest rival: humanity.

Seven pieces to draw, color, cut, and arrange, next to others to
form the global jigsaw puzzle.

The first is the double accumulation, of wealth and poverty, at
the two poles of global society. The other is the total exploitation
of the totality of the world. The third is the nightmare of the
migrant part of humanity. The fourth is the nauseating relationship
between crime and Power. The fifth is the violence of the State. The
sixth is the mystery of megapolitics. The seventh is the multi-forms
of pockets of resistance of humanity against neoliberalism.

FIRST PIECE

The concentration of wealth and the distribution of poverty.
The first figure can be constructed by drawing a dollar sign.

In the history of humanity, different social models have fought to
hoist the absurd as a distinctive world orders. Surely, neoliberalism
will have a place of privilege at the time of the awards, because its
"distribution" of social wealth does no more than distribute a double
absurdity of accumulation: the accumulation of wealth in the hands of
a few, and the accumulation of poverty in millions of human beings.
In the actual world, injustice and inequality are distinctive
characteristics. . Planet earth, third of the solar planetary system,
has 5 billion people. Of them, only 500 million live with comfort
while 4 1/2 billion live in poverty and levels of subsistence.

Doubly absurd is the distribution among rich and poor: the rich
are few and the poor are many. The quantitative difference is
criminal, but the balance between the two extremes is secured with
wealth: the rich supplement their small numbers with millions upon
millions of dollars. The fortune of the 358 wealthiest people of the
world (thousands of millions of dollars) is superior to the annual
income of 45% of the poorest inhabitants, something like 2 1/2
billion people.

The gold chains of the financial watches are converted into a
heavy chain for millions of beings. Meanwhile the "total number of
transactions of General Motors is larger than the Gross National
Product of Denmark, that of Ford is larger than the GNP of South
Africa, and that of Toyota far surpasses the GNP of Norway" (Ignacio
Ramonet, In LMD 1/1997 #15). For all workers real salaries have
fallen, in addition to having to survive the personnel cuts in
companies, the closing of factories and the relocation of workplaces.
In the so-called "advanced capitalist economies" the number of
unemployed has arrived at a total of 41 million workers.

Little by little, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a
few and the distribution of poverty among many begins to trace the
profile of modern global society: the fragile equilibrium of absurd
inequalities.

The decadence of the neoliberal economic is a scandal: "The world
debt (combining that of all companies, governments and
administrations) has surpassed 33 trillion dollars, or 130% of the
global GNP, and grows at a rate of 6 to 8% per year, more than 4
times the growth of the global GNP" (Frederic F. Clairmont. "Ces deux
cents societes qui controlent le monde", in LMD, IV/1997.

The progress of the great transnationals does not imply the
advancement of developed Nations. To the contrary, while the great
financial giants earn more, poverty sharpens in the so-called "rich
nations".

The chasm between the rich and poor is brutal and no tendency
appears to the contrary, indeed it continues. Far from lessening, we
won't say eliminating it, the social inequality is accentuated, above
all in the developed capitalist nations: in the United States,1% of
the wealthiest Americans have conquered 61.6% of the total national
wealth between 1983 and 1989. 80% of the poorest Northamericans share
only 1.2% of the wealth. In Great Britain the number of homeless has
grown; the number of children who survive on social welfare has gone
from 7% in 1979 to 26% in 1994, the number of British who live in
poverty (defined as less than half of minimum wage) has gone from 5
million to 13,700,000; 10% of the poorest have lost 13% of their
purchasing power, while 10% of the richest have gained 65% and in a
period of the past 5 years the number of millionaires has doubled
(statistics from LMD,IV/97).

At the beginning of the decade of the 90's "...an estimated 37,000
transnational companies held, with their 170,000 subsidiaries, the
international economy in its tentacles." Nevertheless, the center of
power situates itself in the most restrictive circle of the first
200: since the beginnings of the 80's, they have had an uninterrupted
expansion through mergers and "rescue" buy-outs of companies.

In this way, the part of transnational capital in the global GNP
has gone from 17% in the middle of the 60's to 24% in 1982 and more
than 30% in 1995. The first 200 are conglomerates whose planetary
activities cover with distinction the primary, secondary, and
tertiary sectors: great agricultural exploitation, manufacturing
production, financial services, commercial, etc. Geographically, they
are divided amongst 10 countries: Japan (62), the United States (53),
Germany (23), France (19), United Kingdom (11), Switzerland (8),
South Korea (6), Italy (5), and others (4)". (Frederic F. Clairmont,
Op.Cit.).

$$ Here you have the symbol of economic power. Now paint it the
green of the dollar. Don't worry about the nauseating odor, the aroma
of manure, mud, and blood which it carries since its birth...

SECOND PIECE

The globalization of exploitation
The second piece is constructed by drawing a triangle.

One of the fallacies of neoliberalism is that economic growth of
the companies brings with it a better distribution of wealth and a
growth I employment. But this is not so. In the same way as the
growth of political power of a king does not bring as a consequence a
growth of political power of the subjects (to the contrary), the
absolute power of financial capital does not better the distribution
of wealth nor does it create major employment for society. Poverty,
unemployment and instability of labor are its structural
consequences.

During the years of the decades of 1960 and 70's, the population
considered poor (with less than a dollar a day of income for their
basic necessities, according to the World Bank) was about 200 million
people. By the beginning of the decade of the 90's this number was
about 2 billion. In addition to this the "mainstay of the 200 most
important companies of the planet represent more than a quarter of
the world's economic activity; and yet these 200 companies employ
only 18.8 million employees, or less than 0.75% of the world's labor
force." Ignacio Ramonet in LMD. January 1997, #15).

More poor human beings and an increase in the level of
impoverishment, less rich and an increase in the level of wealth,
these are the lessons of the outline of the First Piece of the
neoliberal jigsaw puzzle. To achieve this absurdity, the world's
capitalist system "modernizes" production, circulation and the
consumption of merchandise. The new technological revolution (the
information revolution) and the new political revolution (the
emerging megalopolis on the ruins of the National States). This
social "revolution is no more than a readjustment, a reorganization
of the social forces, principally the labor force.

The Economically Active Population on a global level went from
1,376 million in 1960 to 2,374 million workers in 1990. More human
beings with the capacity to work, in other words, to generate wealth.

But the "new world order" not only rearranges this new labor force
in geographic and productive spaces, it also re-orders its place (or
lack of a place, as in the case of the unemployed and subemployed) in
the globalizing plan of the economy.

The World Population employed by sector was substantially changed
in the last 20 years. In fishing and agriculture it went from 22% in
1970 to 12% I 1990; in manufacturing from 25% in 1970 to 22% in 1990;
while in the tertiary sector (commerce, transport, banking and
services) it grew from 42% in 1970 to 57% in 1990; while the
population employed in the agricultural and fishing sector fell from
30% in 1970 to 15% in 1990. (Statistics from "The Labor Force in the
World Market in Contemporary Capitalism". Ochoa Chi, Juanita del
Pilar. UNAM. Economy. Mexico, 1997).

This means that each time more workers are channeled towards the
necessary activities to increase production or to accelerate the
elaboration of merchandise. The neoliberal system operates in this
way like a mega-boss, conceiving the world market as a single
company, administered with "modernizing" criteria.

But neoliberal modernity appears more like the beastly birth of
capitalism as a world system, than like utopic "rationality".
"Modern" capitalist production continues to base itself in the labor
of children, women and migrant workers. Of the 1 billion, 148 million
children in the world, at least 100 million of them live in the
streets and almost 200 million of them work. It is expected that 400
million of them will be working by the year 2000. It is said as well
that 146 million Asian children labor in the production of auto
parts, toys, clothing, food, tools and chemicals. But this
exploitation of child labor does not only exist in underdeveloped
countries, 40% of English children and 20% of French children also
work in order to complete the family income or to survive. In the
"pleas ure" industry there is also a place for children. The UN
estimates that each year a million children enter sexual trafficking
(Statistics in Ochoa Chi, J. Op. Cit.).

The neoliberal beast invades all the social world homogenizing
even the lines of food production "IN global terms if we observe
particularities in the food consumption of each region (and its
interior), the process of homogenization which is being imposed is
evident, including over those physiological-cultural differences of
the different zones." ("World Market of means of Subsistence.
1960-1990. Ocampo Figueroa, Nashelly, and Flores Mondragon, Gonzalo.
UNAM. Economy.1994).

This beast imposes upon humanity a heavy burden. The unemployment
and the instability of millions of workers all over the world is a
cutting reality which has no horizons and no signs of lessening.
Unemployment in the countries which make up the Organization for
Cooperation and economic Development went from 3.8% in 1966 to 6.3%
in 1990. In Europe alone it went from 2.2% in 1966 to 6.4% in 1990.

The imposition of the laws of the market all over the world, the
global market, have done nothing but destroy small and medium-size
businesses. Upon the disappearance of local and regional markets, the
small and medium-size producers see themselves without protection and
without any possibility of competing against gigantic transnationals.

The results: massive bankruptcy of companies.
The consequence; millions of unemployed workers.

The absurdity of neoliberalism repeats itself: growth in
production does not generate employment, on the contrary, it destroys
it. The UN calls this stage "Growth without employment."

But the nightmare does not end there. In addition to the threat of
unemployment workers must confront precarious working conditions.
Major on-the-job instability, longer working days and poor salaries,
are consequences of globalization in general and the "tertiary"
tendency of the economy (the growth of the "service" sector) in
particular. "In the countries under domination, the labor force
suffers a precarious reality: extreme mobility, jobs without
contracts, irregular salaries and generally inferior to the vital
minimum and regimes with emaciated retirement benefits, independent
activities which are not declared and have hit-and-miss salaries, in
other words, servitude or forced labor within populations which are
supposedly protected such as children" (Alain Morice. "Foreign
workers, advance sector of instability." LMD. January 1997).

The consequences of all this translates itself into a bottoming
out of global reality. The reorganization of productive processes and
the circulation of merchandise and readjustment of productive forces,
produce a peculiar excess: left-over human beings, not necessary for
the "new world order", who do not produce, or consume, who do not use
credit, in sum, who are disposable.

Each day, the great financial centers impose their laws to nations
and groups of nations in all the world They reorder and readjust
their inhabitants. And, at the end of the operation, they find they
have "left-over" people. "They fire upon the volume of the excess
population, which is not only subjected to the brunt of the most
cruel poverty, but which does not matter, which is loose and
separate, and whose only end is to wander through the streets without
a fixed direction, without housing or work, without family or social
relations-with a minimal stability--, whose only company are its
cardboard and plastic bags (Fernandez Duran, Ramon. "Against the
Europe of capital and economic globalization". Talasa. Madrid, 1996).

Economic globalization "made necessary a decline in real salaries
at the international level, which together with the reduction of
social costs (health, education, housing and food) and an anti-union
climate, came to constitute the fundamental part of the new
neoliberal politics of capitalist reactivation_ (Ocampo F. and Flores
M. Op. Cit.).

Here is the illustration of the pyramid of global exploitation:

/\

/ \

/_______ \

THE THIRD PIECE MIGRATION, THE ERRANT NIGHTMARE.

The third figure is constructed by drawing a circle.

We spoke beforehand of the existence of new territories, at the
end of the Third World War, which awaited conquest (the old socialist
countries), and of others which should have been re-conquered by the
"new world order". In order to achieve it, the financial centers
carried out a criminal and brutal third strategy; the proliferation
of "regional wars" and "internal conflicts", which mobilized great
masses of workers and allowed capital to follow routes of atypical
accumulation.

The results of this world war of conquest was a great ring of
millions of migrants in all the world "Foreigners" in the world
"without borders" which the victors of the Third World War promised.
Millions of people suffered xenophobic persecution, precarious labor
conditions, loss of cultural identity, police repression, hunger,
prison, death.

"From the American Rio Grande to the "European" Schengen space, a
double contradictory tendency is confirmed. On one side the borders
are closed officially to the migration of labor, on the other side
entire branches of the economy oscillate between instability and
flexibility, which are the most secure means of attracting a foreign
labor force" (Alain Morice, Op. Cit.).

With different names, under a judicial differentiation, sharing an
equality of misery, the migrants or refugees or displaced of all the
world are "foreigners" who are tolerated or rejected. The nightmare
of migration, whatever its causes, continues to roll and grow over
the planet's surface. The number of people who are accounted for in
the statistics of the UN High Commission on Refugees has grown
disproportionately from some 2 million in 1975 to 27 million in 1995.

With national borders destroyed ( for merchandise) the globalized
market organizes the global economy: research and design of goods and
services, as well as their circulation and consumption are thought of
in intercontinental terms. For each part of the capitalist process
the "new world order" organizes the flow of the labor force,
specialized or not, up to where it is necessary. Far from subject ing
itself to the "free flow" so clucked-over by neoliberalism, the
employment markets are each day determined more by migratory flows.
Where skilled workers are concerned, whose numbers are not
significance in the context of global migration, the "crossing of
brains" represents a great deal in terms of economic power and
knowledge. Nevertheless, whether skilled labor, or unskilled labor,
the migratory politics of neoliberalism is oriented more towards
destabilizing the global labor market than towards stopping
immigration.

The Fourth World War, with its process of destruction/depopulation
and reconstruction/reorganization provokes the displacement of
millions of people. Their destiny is to continue to wander, with the
nightmare at their side, and to offer to employed workers in
different nations a threat to their employment stability, an enemy to
hide the image of the boss, and a pretext for giving meaning to the
racist nonsense promoted by neoliberalism.

This is the symbol of the errant nightmare of global migration, a
ring of terror which roams all over the world.

FOURTH PIECE:

FINANCIAL GLOBALIZATION AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF CORRUPTION AND
CRIME

The fourth figure is constructed by drawing a rectangle

The mass media reward us with an image of the directors of global
delinquency: vulgar men and women, dressed outlandishly, living in
ridiculous mansions or behind the bars of a jail. But that image
hides more than it shows: the real bosses of the modern Mafiosi, or
their organization, or their real influence in the political and
economic regions are never divulged publicly.

If you think the world of delinquency is synonymous with the world
beyond the grave and darkness , you are mistaken. During the period
called the "Cold War", organized crime acquired a more respectable
image and began to function like any other modern company. It also
penetrated the political and economic systems of the national States.
With the beginning of the Fourth World War, the implantation of the
"new world order" and its accompanying opening of markets,
privatization, deregulation of commerce and international finance,
organized crime "globalized" its activities as well.

"According to the UN, the annual global income of transnational
criminal organizations are about 1000 billion dollars, an amount
equivalent to the combined GNP of countries with weak income
(according to the categories of the global banks) and its 3 billion
inhabitants. This estimate accounts for the product of drug
trafficking, the illegal trafficking of arms, contraband of nuclear
materials, etc., and the profits of activities controlled by the
Mafiosi (prostitution, gambling, black market speculation...).

However, this does not measure the importance of investments which
are continuously realized by criminal organizations within the sphere
of control of legitimate businesses, nor the domination which they
exert over the means of production within numerous sectors of the
legal economy" (Michel Chossudovsky, "La Corruption mondialisee" in
"Geopolitique du Chaos". Op. Cit.).

The criminal organizations of the 5 continents have made theirs
the "spirit of global cooperation" and, associated, participate in
the conquest and reorganization of the new markets. But they
participate not only in criminal activities, but I legal businesses
as well. Organized crime invests in legitimate businesses not only to
"launder" dirty money, but to make capital for their illegal
activities. The preferred business endeavors for this are luxury real
estate, the vacation industry, mass media, industry, agriculture,
public services and ... banking!

Ali Baba and the 40 bankers? No, something worse. The dirty money
of organized crime is utilized by the commercial banks for its
activities: loans, investments in financial markets, purchase of
bonds for foreign debt, buying and selling of gold and stocks. "In
many countries, the criminal organizations have become the creditors
of the States and they exert, because of their actions on the
markets, an influence over the macroeconomic politics of the
governments. Over the stock markets, they invest equally in the
speculative markets of finished products and raw materials" (M.
Chossudovsky, Op. Cit.)

As if this were not enough, organized crime can count on the
so-called fiscal paradises. There are all over the world at least 55
fiscal paradises (One of these, the Cayman Islands, has fifth place
in the world as a banking center and has more banks and registered
companies than inhabitants). The Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands,
the Bermudas, Saint Martin, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Luxembourg,
Maurice Island, Switzerland, the Anglo-Normandy Islands, Dublin,
Monaco, Gibraltar, Malta, are good places so that organized crime can
relate with the great financial companies of the world.

In addition to the "laundering" of dirty money, the fiscal
paradises are used to avoid taxes, so they area point of contact
between those who govern, CEO's and capos of organized crime. High
technology, applied to finances permits the rapid circulation of
money and the disappearance of illegal profits. "The legal and
illegal businesses overlap more and more, they introduce a
fundamental change in the structures of capitalism of the post-war
era. The Mafiosi invest in legal businesses, and inversely, they
channel financial resources towards the criminal economy, through the
control of banks and commercial companies implicated I the laundering
of dirty money or which have relations with criminal organizations.
The banks pretend that the transactions are carried out I good faith
and their directors ignore the origin of the funds deposited. The
rule is to ask no questions, the bank secretary and the anonymity of
transactions, all this guarantee the interests of organized crime,
they protect the banking institution from public investigations and
from blame. Not only do the large banks accept laundered money, in
view of their heavy commissions, but they also concede credits to at
high interest rates to the Mafiosi, to the detriment of productive
industrial or agricultural investments." (M. Chossudovsky, Op.
City.).

The crisis of the world debt, in the 80's caused the price of
prime materials to go down. This caused the underdeveloped countries
to dramatically reduce their income. The economic measures dictated
by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, supposedly to
"recuperate" the economy of these countries, only sharpened the
crisis of the legal businesses. As a consequence, the illegal economy
has developed in order to fill the vacuum left by the fall of
national markets.

In accordance with a report by the United Nations, "The intrusion
of the crime syndicates has been facilitated by the structural
adjustment programs with the indebted countries have been obliged to
accept I order to access the loans of the International Monetary
Fund" (United Nations. "La Globalization du Crime" New York, 1995).

So here you have the rectangular mirror where legality and
illegality exchange reflections.

On which side of the mirror is the criminal? On which side of the
mirror is the one who prosecutes the criminal?

Fifth Piece

The legitimate violence of an illegitimate power?
The Fifth Piece is constructed by drawing a pentagon.

The State, in neoliberalism, tends to shrink to the "indispensable
minimum". The so- called "Benefactor State" does not only become
obsolete, it separates itself of all it was made up of as such, and
it remains naked.

In the cabaret of globalization, the State shows itself as a table
dancer that strips of everything until it is left with only the
minimum indispensable garments: the repressive force. With its
material base destroyed, its possibilities of sovereignty annulled,
its political classes blurred, the Nation States become, more or less
rapidly, a security apparatus of the megacorporations that
neoliberalism builds in the development of this Fourth World War.
Instead of directing public investment towards social spending, the
Nation States, prefer to improve their equipment, armaments and
training in order to fulfill with efficiency a duty that its politics
could no longer carry out some years hence: control of society.

The "professionals of legitimate violence" as the repressive
apparatus of the modern states call themselves. But, what is there to
do if violence is already under the laws of the market? Where is the
legitimate violence and where is the illegitimate? What monopoly of
violence can the battered Nation States pretend if the free game of
supply and demand defies that monopoly? Didn't the Fourth Piece
demonstrate that organized crime, governments and financial centers
are more than well related? Isn't it evident that organized crime
counts on real armies which have no borders except the fire power of
its rival? And so the "monopoly of violence" does not belong to the
Nation States. The modern market has put it on sale. . .

This is taken into account because under the polemic between
legitimate and illegitimate violence, there is also the dispute
(false, I think) between "rational" and "irrational" violence.

A certain sector of the world's intellectuals (I insist that their
duty is more complex than to simply be of the "left or right",
"pro-government or opposition", "good etcetera or bad etcetera")
pretends that violence can be exerted in a "rational" manner,
administered in a selective way, (there are those, also, who to
something like the "Market technology of violence"), and can be
applied with the ability "of a surgeon" against the evils of society.
Something like this inspired the last stage of arms policy in the
United States: precise "surgical" weapons, and military operations
like the scalpel of the "new world order". This is how the new "smart
bombs" were born (which, as a reporter who covered Desert Storm told
me, are not that intelligent and have difficulty distinguishing
between a hospital and a missile depository. When in doubt, the smart
bombs don't abstain, they destroy). Anyway, as the compañeros
of the Zapatista communities would say, the Persian Gulf is farther
than the state capital of Chiapas (although the situation of the
Kurds has horrifying similarities with the indigenous of a country
who praises itself as "democratic and free"), and so let us not
insist on "that" war when we have "ours".

And so the struggle between rational and irrational violence opens
an interesting and lamentable path of discussion, it is not useless
in present times. We could take for example what is understood as
rational. If the response is that it is the "reason of the State"
(assuming that this exists, and that above all, one would be able to
recognize some reason in the actual neoliberal state) and then one
can ask if this "reason of the state" corresponds to the "reason of
society" (always assuming that today's society retains some reason
and furthermore if the rational violence of the state is rational to
the society. Here there is no point in rambling (idly), the
"rationale of the state" in modern times is none other than the
"rationale of the financial markets".

But, how does the modern state administer its "rational violence"?
And, paying attention to history, how much time does this rationality
last? The time it takes between one election and another or coup
(depending on the case)? How many acts of violence by the State, that
were applauded as "rational" during that time, are now irrational?

Lady Margaret Thatcher, of "acceptable" memory for the british
people, took the time to prologue the book "The Next War" of Caspar
Weinberg and Peter Schweizer (Regnery Publishing, Inc. Washington,
D.C. 1996).

In this text Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, advances some reflections
about the three similarities between the world of the Cold War and
that of the Post Cold War: The first of these is that the "free
world" will never lack potential aggressors. The second is the
necessity of the military superiority of the "democratic" states
above possible aggressors. The third similarity is that this military
superiority should be, above all, technological.

To end her prologue, the so-called "iron lady" defines this
"rational violence" of the modern state by stating: "A war can take
place in different ways. But the worst usually happens because one
power believes it can reach its objectives without a war or at least
with a limited war that can be won rapidly, resulting in failed
calculations."

For Misters Weinberg and Schweizer the scenes of the "Future Wars"
are: North Korea and China (April 6, 1998), Iran (April 4, 1999),
Mexico (March 7, 2003), Russia (February 7, 2006), and Arabs, Latinos
and Europeans. Almost the entire world is considered a "possible
aggressor of modern democracy".

Logic (at least in neoliberal logic): In modern times, the power
(that is, financial power) knows that it can only reach its
objectives with a war, and not with a limited war that can be won
rapidly but with a total war, world wide in every sense. And if we
believe the secretary of state Madeleine Albright, when she says:
"One of the primary objectives of our government is to ensure that
the economic interests of the United States can extend itself to a
planetary scale" ("The Wall Street Journal". 1/21/1997), we need to
understand that all the world ( and I mean everything, everything) is
the theater of operations of this war.

We should understand then that if the dispute for the "monopoly of
violence" does not take place according to the laws of the market,
but is rejected and defied from the bottom, the world power
"discovers" in this challenge a "possible aggressor". This is one of
the defiances (of the least studied and most condemned among the many
it represents), launched by the armed indigenous rebels of the
Zapatista National Liberation Army against neoliberalism and for
humanity. . .

This is the symbol of North American military power, the pentagon.
The new "world police" seeks that the "national" army and police only
be the "security corps" that guarantee "order and progress" in the
neoliberal magapolis.

Sixth Piece

Megapolitics and the dwarfs
The Sixth Piece is constructed by drawing a scribble.

We said before that Nation States are attacked by the financial
centers and "obligated" to dissolve within the megalopolis. But
neoliberalism not only operates its war "unifying" nations and
regions, its strategy of destruction/depopulation and
reconstruction/reorganization produces one or various fractures in
the Nation State. This is the paradox of the Fourth World War: it is
made to eliminate borders and "unite" nations, yet what it leaves
behind is multiplication of the borders and a pulverization of the
nations that die in its claws. Beyond the pretexts, ideologies and
banners, the current world dynamics of the breaking up of the unity
of the Nation States responds to a policy; equally universal, that
knows it can better exert its power, and create optimum conditions
for its reproduction, on top of the ruins of the Nation States.

If someone had doubts about characterizing the process of
globalization as a world war, they should discard it when adding up
accounts of the conflicts that have been provoked by the collapse of
some nation states. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, USSR are examples of
the depth of the crisis that leaves in shreds not only the political
and economic foundations of the Nation States but also the social
structures. Slovania, Croatia and Bosnia in addition to the present
war within the Russian federation with Chechnia as a backdrop, not
only mark the outcome of the tragic downfall of the socialist camp in
the forbidding arms of the "free world", all over the world this
process of national fragmentation repeats itself in variable stages
and intensity. There are separatist tendencies in the Span ish state
(the Basques, Catalonia and Galicia), in Italy (Padua), in Belgium
(Flanders), in France (Corsica), United Kingdom (Scotland, Galic
peoples), Canada (Quebec). And there are more examples in the rest of
the world.

We have also referred to the process of the construction of the
megalopolis, now we talk of fragmentation of countries. Both
processes are based upon the destruction of the Nation States. Is it
about two parallel, independent processes? Two facets of the
globalization process? Are they symptoms of a megacrisis about to
explode? Are they merely isolated cases?

We think it is about an inherent contradiction to the process of
globalization, one of the essences of the neoliberal model. The
elimination of commercial borders, the universality of
tele-communications, the information super highways, the omnipresence
of the financial centers, the international agreements of economic
unity, in short, the process of globalization as a whole produces, by
liquidating the nation states, a pulverization of the internal
markets. These do not disappear or are diluted in the international
markets, but consolidate their fragmentation and multiply. It may
sound contradictory, but globalization produces a fragmented world,
full of isolated pieces (and often pieces which confront each other).
A world full of stagnant compartments, communicating barely by
fragile economic bridges (in any case as constant as the weathervane
which is finance capital). A world of broken mirrors reflecting the
useless world unity of the neoliberal puzzles.

But neoliberalism not only fragments the world it pretends to
unite, it also produces the political economic center that conducts
this war. And yes, as we referred to before, the financial centers
impose their (laws of the market) to nations and grouping of nations,
and so we should redefine the limits and reaches pursued by the
policy, in other words, duties of political work. It is convenient
than to speak of Megapolitics> Here is where the "world order"
would be decided.

And when we say "megapolitics" we don't refer to the number of
those who move in them. There are a few, very few, who find
themselves in this "megasphere". Megapolitics globalizes national
politics, in other words, it subjects it to a direction that has
global interests (that for the most part are contradictory to
national interests) and whose logic is that of the market, which is
to say, of economic profit. With this economist (and criminal)
criteria, wars, credits, selling and buying of merchandise,
diplomatic acknowledgements, commercial blocks, political supports,
migration laws, coups, repressions, elections, international
political unity, political ruptures and investments are decided upon.
In short the survival of entire nations.

The global power of the financial centers is so great, that they
can afford not to worry about the political tendency of those who
hold power in a nation, if the economic program (in other words, the
role that nation has in the global economic megaprogram) remains
unaltered. The financial disciplines impose themselves upon the
different colors of the world political spectrum in regards to the
government of any nation. he great world power can tolerate a leftist
government in any part of the world, as long as the government does
not take measures that go against the needs of the world financial
centers. But in no way will it tolerate that an alternative economic,
political and social organization consolidate. For the megapolitics,
the national politics are dwarfed and submit to the dict ates of the
financial centers. It will be this way until the dwarfs rebel . .

You have here the figure that represents the megapolitics. You
will understand that it is useless to try to find within it a
rationality and even if you untangle it, nothing will be clear.

SEVENTH PIECE: THE POCKETS OF RESISTANCE

The seventh figure can be constructed by drawing a pocket

"To begin with, I beg you not to confuse Resistance
with political opposition. The opposition does not oppose power but a
government, and its achieved and complete form is that of a party of
opposition: while resistance, by definition (now useful) cannot be a
party: it is not made to govern at its time, but to...resist."

Tomas Segovia. "Allegations". Mexico, 1996.

The apparent infallibility of globalization clashes with the
stubborn disobedience to reality. At the same time as neoliberalism
carries out its world war, all over the world groups of those who
will not conform take shape, nuclei of rebels. The empire of
financial pockets confront the rebellion of the pockets of
resistance.

Yes, pockets. Of all sizes, of all colors, of the most varied
forms. Their only similarity is their resistance to the "new world
order" and the crime against humanity that the neoliberal war carries
out.

Upon its attempt to impose its economic, political, social and
cultural model, neoliberalism pretends to subjugate millions of human
beings, and do away with all those who do not have a place in its new
distribution of the world. But as it turns out these "disposible"
ones rebel and they resist against the power who wants to eliminate
them. Women, children, the elderly, the indigenous, the ecologists,
homosexuals,lesbians, HIV positives, workers and all those men and
women who are not only "left over" but who"bother" the established
order and world progress rebel, and organize and struggle. Knowing
they are equal yet different, the excluded ones from "modernity"
begin to weave their resistance against the process of
destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganization which is
carried out as a world war, by neoliberalism.

In Mexico, for example, the so-called "Program of Integrated
Development for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec" pretends to construct a
modern international center of distributio and assembly for products.
The development zone covered an industrial complex which would refine
the third part of Mexican crude oil and elaborate 88% of
petrochemical products. The routes of interoceanic transit will
consist of highways, a water route following the natural curve of the
zone (the river Coatzacoalcos) and as an articulating center, the
trans-isthmus railroad line (in the hands of 5 companies, 4 from the
United States and one from Canada). The project would be an assembly
zone under the regime of twin plants.

Two million residents of the place will become stevedores,
assembly line workers, or railway guards (Ana Esther Cecena. "El
Istmo de Tehuantepec: frontera de la soberania nacional". "La Jornada
del Campo", May 28, 1997.) In Southeast Mexico as well, in the
Lacandon Jungle the "Program for Sustainable Regional Development for
the Lacandon Jungle" begins operations. Its final objective is to
place at the feet of capital the indigenous lands which, in addition
to beig rich in dignity and history, are also rich in oil and
uranium.

The visible results of all these projects will be, among others,
the fragmentation of mexico (separating the southeast from the rest
of the country). In addition to this, and now we speak of war, the
projects have counterinsurgency implications. They make up a part of
a pincer to liquidate the antineoliberal rebellio which exploded in
1994. In the middle stand the idigenous rebels of the Zapatista Army
of National Liberation (EZLN).

(A parenthesis is now convenient int he theme of indigenous
rebels: the Zapatistas think that, in Mexico (attention: in Mexico)
the recuperation and defense of national sovereignty is part of an
antineoliberal revolution. Paradoxically, the EZLN is accused of
pretendeing to fragment the Mexican nation. The reality is that the
only ones who have spoke of separatism are the businessmen of the
state of Tabasco (rich in oil) and the federal deputies of Chiapas
who belong to the PRI. The Zapatistas think that the defense of the
national state is necessary I view of globalization, and that the
attempts to slice Mexico to pieces comes from the governing group and
not from the just demands for autonomy for the Indian Peoples. The
EZLN, and the best of the national indigenous movement, does not want
the Indian peoples to separate from Mexico, but to be recognized as
part of the country with their differences.

Not only that, they want a Mexico with democracy, liberty and
justice. The paradoxes continue because while the EZLN struggle for
the defense of national sovereignty, the Mexican Federal Army
struggles against that defense and defends a governmet who has
destroyed the material bases of national sovereignty and given the
country, not just to powerful foreign capital, but to the drug
traffickers).

But resistance does not only exist in the mountains of Southeast
Mexico against neoliberalism. In other parts of mexico, in latin
America, in the United States and Canada, in the Europe which belogs
to the Treaty of Masstrich, in Africa, in Asia, in Oceania, the
pockets of resistance multiply. Each one of them has its own histoyr
its differences, its equalities, its demands, its strugles, its
accomplishments.

If humanity still has hope of survival, of being better, that hope
is in the pockets formed by the excluded ones, the left-overs, the
ones who are disposible.

This is a model for a pocket of resistance, but don't pay too much
attention to it. There are as many models as there are resistances,
and as many worlds as in the world. So draw the model you prefer. As
far as this things about the pockets is concerned, they are rich in
diversity, as are the resistances.

There are, no doubt, more pieces of the neoliberal jigsaw puzzle.
For example: the mass media, culture, pollution, pandemias. We only
wanted to show you here the profiles of 7 of them.

These 7 are enough so that you, after you draw, color and cut them
out, can see that it is impossible to put them together. And this is
the problem of the world which globalization pretends to construct:

the pieces don't fit.

For this and other reasons which do not fit into the space of this
text, it is necessary to make a new world.

A world where many worlds fit, where all worlds fit...

>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,Subcomandante Insurgente MarcosZapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico,June of 1997.

P.S. Which tells of dreams that nest in love. The sea rests at my
side. It shares with me since some time ago anguish, doubts and many
dreams, but now it sleeps with me in the hot night of the jungle. I
look at its agitated wheat in sleep and I marvel once again at how I
have found her as always; lukewarm, fresh and at my side. The
asphyxia makes me get out of bed and takes my hand and the pen to
bring back Old Man Antonio as was years ago...

I have asked that Old Man Antonio accompany me in an exploration
to the river below. We have no more than a little bit of cornmeal to
eat. For hours we follow those capricious channels and the hunger and
the heat press on us. All afternoon we spend after a drove of wild
boar. It is almost nightfall when we catch up with them, but a huge
mountain pig breaks away from the group and attacks us. I quickly
take out all my military knowledge by dropping my weapon and climbing
up the nearest tree. Old Man Antonio remains defenseless before the
attack, but instead of running, goes behind a grove of reeds. The
giant pig runs frontally and with all its strength against the reeds,
and becomes entangled in the thorns and the vines. Before it is able
to free itself, Old Man Antonio picks up his old musket and shoots it
in the head, settling supper for that day.

At dawn, after I have finished cleaning my modern automatic weapon
( an M-16, 5.56 mm. Caliber, with cadence selector and effective
reach of 460 meters, in addition to telescopic site, tripod and a 60
shot drum clip), I wrote in my military journal, omitting the above:
"Ran into a pig and A. killed one. 350 m. above sea level. It didn't
rain."

While we waited for the meat to cook I told Old Man Antonio that
the part which I would get, would serve for the parties being
prepared back at the camp. "Parties?" he asked as he tended the fire.
"Yes" I said "No matter the month, there's always something to
celebrate." Afterwards I continue with what I supposed would be a
brilliant dissertation about the historic calendar and the Zapatista
celebrations. In silence I listened to Old Man Antonio, and assuming
it did not interest him, I settled in to sleep.

Between dreams I saw Old Man Antonio take my notebook and write
something. I the morning, we gagve out the meat after breakfast and
each one took to the road. In our camp, I report to my superior and
show him the logbook so he'll know what happened. "That's not your
writing" I'm told as he shows me a page from the notebook. There, at
the end of what I had written that day, Old Man Antonio had written
in large letters:

"If you cannot have both reason and strength, always choose to
have reason and let the enemy have all the strength. In many battles
strength can obtain the victory, but in all the struggle only reason
can win. The powerful can never extract reason from his strength, but
we can always obtain strength from reason".

And below in smaller letters "Happy parties."

It's obvious, I wasn't hungry anymore. The parties, as always,
were very joyful. "The one with the red ribbon" was still, happily,
very far from the hit parade of the Zapatistas..